Transgender

Forum











Jane's Journey

Finding Your Voice

Thoughts, hints, opinions, ideas, etc., on being transgendered

By Jane Fleming

My first job after dropping out of college was as a technician at an NBC radio station. It was the mid-1960s, and on the weekend NBC used to run a variety program called "Monitor." One of the features was a commentary by Al Capp, creator of the "Li'l Abner" comic strip, who billed himself as an "Expert on nothing with opinions on everything." I'm going to borrow his appellation for myself. I have no claim to expertise other than having lived full time as a woman for the past year, but I'd like to share some thoughts and insights acquired along the way and helpful hints others have shared with me. My focus is primarily toward the transsexual, although a number of items are valid for crossdressers as well. There have been two categories of issues I've found myself dealing with in transition - what I consider "technical" and "psychological." And depending on my time and your interest, I'll talk about both as we go forward.

The first item I'd like to consider is voice. It's a good one, in that it involves both the technical and psychological. It's also particularly good because so many transgendered people I've met seem to postpone dealing with it. For myself, the voice has required more attention and been less satisfactorily resolved than any other aspect of transition. But I once made a living reading news on the radio as a man, and am now addressed on the phone as Ma'am; so while I don't particularly like the sound of the new voice, it is at least serviceable.

I was sitting in an Indian restaurant one day last year, surrounded by curry dishes and engrossed in working a crossword puzzle, when a transsexual walked in. She was on the other side of a partition, but the voice was enough to startle me out of my preoccupations. A reminder, if I needed one, of how central voice is in daily life.

Speaking As A Woman cover There are reference materials available. The tape Melanie Speaks is widely used, as is Alison Laing's Speaking As A Woman. But I also found it invaluable to have a few sessions with a speech therapist who has worked with transsexuals. I went to Maureen O'Connor in Menlo Park, Calif, whom I would highly recommend.

There is a lot you can do on your own, though, without a therapist. Being pretty much tone deaf (I've never been able to carry a tune), I found access to a musical instrument very useful. Normal male and female voice pitches overlap to a certain extent, and that range is where we need to start. In my case, I found that I don't want my pitch to go below G-Sharp below Middle-C. And my voice can reach C-Sharp above Middle-C without cracking. That's not a very wide range of pitch, so I've also practiced to loosen the lower end ofthe falsetto voice. That gives the capability to inflect a scattering of syllables with higher notes.

It's not very practical to carry my piano in the car. So I made a cassette tape with the G-Sharp and C-sharp tones. (I used the sound card in my computer to generate the tape, but you could also record from an instrument.) I can play that as needed to check myself. It has proved particularly useful after a long drive - after several hours without speaking it helps to say a couple of practice words to myself to loosen the voice before getting out of the car.

Whatever your range, you need to be sensitive to melody. If you listen to women's voices, you hear a much more sing-song quality than with men. Men tend to use strength and volume for emphasis,women use pitch. A man saying, "We need to do this NOW!" will hit the word "now" harder; a woman will use a different pitch. And a woman may change pitch on a single word or syllable that she's saying, somewhat as does a musician with a slide trombone. We may not like stereotypes, but I think this is an area where it's good to learn to emulate the stereotype before deciding on which aspects to stretch or break. Listen to women in conversation, particularly when they're not being businesslike. Women in a business environment, and notably women broadcasters, tend to adopt more traditionally masculine patterns ofspeech.

Resonance is a harder element to deal with. Men generally have larger chest and vocal areas than women. Some people find resonance is lessened by keeping a certain tension in the lower abdominal muscles and trying to place the voice as far forwardin the mouth as possible. A trick I've used to test myself is to place fingertips lightly on the front of the throat, about a half inch above the Adam's apple, and to speak without being able to feel any vibration. It's partially a matter of pitch, but also a matter of focus.

You will also notice that women tend to use different,less assertive speech patterns. A man might say, "Give me a Coors." A woman: "Could I have a Coors, please?" The "could I" and the "please" both soften the order into a request, as would a somewhat rising pitch at the end of the sentence. Women tend to qualify statements by turning them into questions, with phrases such as "isn't it" or "don't you think..."

Which brings up another area for observation. Men tend to end their statements with a downward inflection. Women may go slightly downward, but more often are neutral or rising in pitch. It is a generally less assertive dynamic.

There are differences in vocabulary. Some women swear like truck drivers, but most don't -- especially if they're around men. Women tend to use different words of description. A couple of days ago I noticed myself telling a woman that her new boyfriend "seems like a sweet man," which you wouldn't hear a man say. Nor would he likely say, "Isn't that a darling dress?" (Here again, a statement of opinion is turned into a question so as to diminish its possible assertiveness.) Of course, you want to be careful about exaggerated use of "feminine" words, or you might wind up sounding like a drag queen. (To paraphrase Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with being a drag queen.")

Women are also much more precise and descriptive about colors. A man might see things in terms of black and white, where as a woman might speak of "midnight" and "Navajo" or "ecru" or "bone." Maureen suggested reading through the descriptions of colors in women's clothing catalogs to expand awareness and vocabulary.

You Just Don't Understand And there are attitudes in conversation. If a woman asks a question, she is often just raising something she wants to talk about, rather than asking the person with whom she's talking for an answer. But if she's talking with a man, he'll likely try to answer it so as to settle things and end that conversation. For a man, a question represents a problem that needs to be resolved with a solution. Some interesting insights into men and women in conversation are contained in Deborah Tannen's book You Just Don't Understand.

A lot of the above involves listening. It's valuable to listen analytically to both men and women. And it's critical to listen to yourself. For pitch, resonance, and melody you can use a cassette recorder, but most of the cheap pocket sized recorders have lousy microphones and poor frequency response. Try to buy a separate microphone, and use it with the cassette deck of your stereo system. Write yourself a page of conversational phrases, and practice each with several different inflections. The phrase, "Who told you that?," for example, could have emphasis on "who," on "you," on "that," or on a combination of words. And as we've mentioned, a feminine inflection would involve differences in melody and pitch, rather than in stress.

A handy little device for listening to yourself in "real time" is sold by Radio Shack as an "amplified listener," part number 33-1093, for $24.99. You supply your own headphones. When we speak normally, a lot of what we hear of our voice is resonated through the head to the ears. This gadget gives a more accurate representation of what you really sound like.

The ultimate vocal challenge is the telephone, for a couple of reasons. If someone sees you looking reasonably presentable and your voice is slightly marginal, they probably won't think twice about it. But there are no visual cues on the phone. Also, telephone audio response is tailored to cut off sounds above about 3,000 Hertz, so it makes lower pitches more noticeable. Maureen suggested I initiate a phone call by saying my name, so as to give at least a psychological cue to the listener. She said that the person one is talking with must make an assumption one way or the other about gender, and even if the voice is very close to acceptable he might make the wrong choice, which could be disheartening. But I prefer the feedback, and don't give my name unless there's a reason to do so.

Speaking of feedback - here's some that's brutal. Go back to Radio Shack and buy a 43-228 phone coupler for $19.99. Your lawyer may tell you it's illegal to record phone conversations without informing the other party, but we're not planning to take these tapes to court. It can be a revealing study to listen to afterwards. Record and listen to both short and extended conversations. Brutal,as I said.

I'd like to add two apparently contradictory suggestions. My experience and that of others has been that the new voice will improvemost significantly when it's the only one you use throughout your day. It's more confusing in the development of reflexes to switch back and forth to a previous male voice. At the same time, limit practice of various aspects to several reasonably short sessions a day and be careful not to strain the voice. Be particularly wary of strain in a noisy environment such as a restaurant or bar. Typically, the femme voice won't carry as well as your old voice. Enunciate clearly, and let the pitch drop a little temporarily if you need to.

Then there's the ultimate question of voice surgery. There seems to be a debate as to whether the surgery raises the overall pitch range of the voice, or whether it just eliminates the possibility of inadvertently producing low masculine tones. I'm not personally considering it for the time being. More information and opinionsare available, among other places, on Dr. Anne Lawrence's web page: http://www.mindspring.com/~alawrence/

Now to the psychological issues of the voice. Again, just my opinions. If you don't agree, skip the hate mail and save a tree <g>.

It feels silly to talk in a higher voice with a different texture. Silly and affected. Perhaps that's why some TSs hardly bother. I was surprised once at a lunch at a major transgender gathering. A number of nicely dressed, nicely made up people spoke to us, almost all using quite male voices.

I don't know their reasoning for the deep voices. But I have examined my own obstacles. A new voice is silly and affected sounding, yes - especially at first. There's general embarrassment. Lack of confidence.

I've discussed this and had similar feedback from some other transsexuals. One woman said to me, "I deliberately keep my voice pitched a little low so that people will know what's going on. I don't want people to think I'm trying to fool them." But I personally don't understand how a feminine voice is any more "deceptive" than are makeup, electrolysis, hormones, surgery, and the other things we do to make our appearance and actions feminine. Another said, "I use a femme voice on the phone if I don't know who's calling. But if I'm talking with another t-person, I lower the pitch so they won't think I'm affected or putting on airs." Another said, "I just want people to accept me for who I am."

For me, that gender convention was the best experience I've had as far as coming to terms with the reluctance to confront the world with a new voice. It was a large gathering - hundreds of transgendered people of various kinds. A post-op friend who was there asked, "How many of these people do you think would be totally unreadable under all circumstances?" Certainly not this six foot tall woman in such a milieu. I even found myself questioning some genetic women!

Nevertheless, I kept "in voice" for the entire convention. Realizing that the bellboys, waitresses, desk clerks, and everybody else had to know I was transgendered, I resisted the temptation to use the old voice as kind of a "letting you know that I know that you know" escape. The staff was all polite and professional, but still I knew that they knew that...

The combined experience of that week brought me to my personal definition of "passing," about which more in a subsequent article: "I would prefer that people assume I'm a genetic woman, but I can never know what anybody really thinks about me unless he says something. As long as I can lead my life how and as who I want to without conflict, I consider that I'm passing adequately."

I live several hours South of San Jose, and the long drives there and back for professional consultations give plenty of time for the mind to chew things over. On one of those drives came an insight. I used to have a very distinctive male voice. It was a tool and a toy. I honed it over the years - with radio broadcasting, public speaking, whispering seductively into women's ears, cajoling or intimidating employees in person or vendors over the phone, etc. I viewed the acquisition of an acceptable female voice as a hurdle that I had to deal with.

The insight that struck me as I was driving one day was that this was a wrong attitude and approach. My male voice had developed its variety and flexibility through years of experience. So I was not going to look at the feminine voice as a "problem" to be conquered, but would instead play with that voice. Rather than just concentrating on developing a voice that was not a detriment, I would try to make it an asset. It may never have the second-nature confidence and scope of the old male voice, but that's what I'm aiming for.

Copyright © 1998 by Jane Fleming. All rights reserved.

TGF's Home Page